The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of KNOW radio station.
"Several factors indicate that KNOW radio can no longer succeed as a rock-and-roll music station. Consider, for example, that the number of people in our listening area over fifty years of age has increased dramatically, while our total number of listeners has declined. Also, music stores in our area report decreased sales of rock-and-roll music. Finally, continuous news stations in neighboring cities have been very successful. We predict that switching KNOW radio from rock-and-roll music to 24-hour news will allow the station to attract older listeners and make KNOW radio more profitable than ever."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
The manager of KNOW radio station comes to a conclusion that broadcasting 24-hour news rather than rock-and-roll music on the station would be more profitable for the company. He comes to this conclusion as there is a decrease in the total number of listeners for the radio station, there is a drastic increase in the number of people over fifty years, there is a decrease in sales of rock-and-roll music in the music stores, and continous news radio stations in neighboring cities have been very successful. However, before this argument can be properly evaluated, one would require answers to the following questions.
Fistly, do the people in the listening area like to hear news? In other words, is it garuented that the people in the listening area who are mostly over fifty years of age listen news? It is possible that most of the people though over fifty years of age, will be busy with their office work during the day and will be busy their family during the night. Hence, their busy schedule can preclude them from listening news over the radio. If this is the case, then the manager's decision to switch to continous news station may not be as profitable as the manger thinks.
Secondly, are there any other sources of news in the locality? It is very common in this world of technological boom for the people to have access to news in various forms namely - newspapers, mobiles, Youtube and last but not the least, television. There is every possibility that the people in the listening area use one or the other form to keep abreast of the latest news. If this turns out to be true, then the author's conclusion that streaming news 24-hours will be lucrative is significantly weakened.
Finally, does streaming news on 24-hour basis costs the same as playing rock-and-roll music? It is overt that playing music over the station requires little expertise and resources. However, to run a continous news station, one would require to first collect the news from the ground or from various sources, preprocess it to bring it to a presentable form and finally, news anchors to present it. Considering there is a lot more logistics involved in running a news channel, it may not be viable option to make good amount of profit. There is a possibility that this could be the case and this would considerably weaken the manager's argument.
Therefore, the argument, as it stands, is unreasonable and unpersuasive due to its reliance as the manager does not include any information pertaining to the question posed above. One would be in a better postion to evaluate the argument if the manager can provide answers, perhaps, in the form of findings from a research or a survey.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 9 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 461 350
No. of Characters: 2171 1500
No. of Different Words: 205 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.634 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.709 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.602 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 110 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.263 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.997 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.333 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.55 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.124 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 417, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... If this turns out to be true, then the authors conclusion that streaming news 24-hours...
^^^^^^^
Line 10, column 626, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
... and this would considerably weaken the managers argument. Therefore, the argument,...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, hence, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2238.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 461.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 4.8546637744 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.63367139033 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67829658829 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 212.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.459869848156 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 693.9 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.5033273879 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.789473684 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2631578947 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.21052631579 5.70786347227 91% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.267631131816 0.218282227539 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0886686872907 0.0743258471296 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0849461190692 0.0701772020484 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.153467044487 0.128457276422 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.116023004121 0.0628817314937 185% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.15 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.08 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 17.5 12.3882235529 141% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.